On Day 2 of the Business Transformation & Operational Excellence World Summit, we heard from representatives of each Operational Excellence Award Winnerto learn more about their project, awards entry and Operational Excellence outcomes. I've compiled the key learnings from each award winner on their entry below, or you can watch the full session here!

"It boils down to your #1 priority - in our case, we have a heavily matrixed environment - a business and market entity that works together. Whoever your stakeholders, board of directors, supervisors - you always rely on alignment at the top, and that's not always easy"

"Our key 3 priorities firstly, a cross-functional team - bringing in nurses, doctors and plugging them straight into the machine. Our second priority was to start simple, with a minimal project, and add complexity as the team members grew accustomed to the software. Thirdly, we redesigned our roadmap - instead of one long project, we set short goals - first 90 days build the product, second we enhance it, and so on - it adds satisfaction.

"We are a traditional Operational Excellence team, our company views us as focusing on process - however, this project allowed us to change our stance to bring about innovation, as well as meaningful financial results. We've gone from being 'process' people, to integrating with innovation in front of the entire company"

Devender Malhotra, Operational Excellence Deployment Leader of the Year

"Thinking on my experience the past two years, I can think of one of my 4 main points to succeed in driving Customer Centricity in an Operational Excellence Project: Don't treat a project as a process initiative, think of it as a Change Management initiative."

"Our project improved culture across the board to make improvements for the patient - I think what we are most proud of is changing the conversation in our organization. We changed the conversation around targets, how executives should be leading, and how data can help our team/understand our own problems and tell stories."

"Our entry focused on re-imagining value-stream mapping. We knew that this process was old wine, and we needed a new bottle. We sought to make these maps an end in themselves, not just a means to an end."

"I think what sets us apart is the 'Big Opportunity'. This started with one worker, one idea, two years ago - two years later we're 5,000 people strong across five continents, using social movement to maintain our projects.This is all about moving from 'I have to', to a culture of 'I want to'."

"[Cognitive Watson] is all about changing the way that work gets done. As we build these solutions, we utilise 'design-thinking' - this user-centric view requires that we think about the workers that will be dealing with new software and automation, to ensure that it's them who benefit from what we can provide."

"From a cultural standpoint, it all starts with a commitment to Operational Excellence for each worker from Day 1. We run through the history of Operational Excellence for every new employee, and provide Lean Six Sigma training throughout the business. It starts with leadership - our CEO is a black belt!"

"I think the reason we won is the way that our excellence program crowdsources innovation - if you look at the history of our Business Excellence program, it started around 10 years ago with 2 dozen guys believing in a training program. We open up the program to all professionals, not just the leadership - this is why we have 2000 Operational Excellence qualified professionals worldwide."

"I have to say, we have ONE priority, and that is ONE way of Manufacturing. However, this was built using the voice of every single customer and professional within the company. Our managers champion the ONE way of manufacturing, and we celebrate all improvements - even when we find waste! If we find waste, we have an opportunity to improve."

There are some fantastic questions from attendees, and these comments above are just scratching the surface of the incredible insights offered by these award winners. Take a look, and if you'd like to learn more about any of their operational excellence projects, you can download the winning case studies here!